Now why is that?asked a part of my brain that really should’ve said something earlier.We have the potential for large crowds, so you need cops just to cope with those problems. We’ve already had a mini protest from other-hating fanatics, which, while pitiful in itself, could certainly breed bigger, scarier rioting if not dealt with correctly.
“Why is Lung here?” I asked.
“I take it you’re not looking for the obvious answer,” said Cole.
“He’s stolen an invaluable item that, if he can duplicate it, will make his army damn near invincible. So why isn’t he riding a rocket to China?”
Cassandra said, “Don’t you mean why hasn’t Pengfei made herself scarce?”
“Yeah, I guess I do.”
“I’m lost,” said Jericho.
I sat forward in my chair. “Look, tonight Lung will have a full Chinese crew aboard that yacht of his. He’s been biding his time, waiting for them to arrive. What’s that say to you?”
They looked at me, their faces a study in blank.
“It’s his getaway car—er, boat,” I explained. “That’s why he’s still here. He couldn’t do anything because his crew was still traveling here from China.”
“So is he leaving tonight?”
“I think so, but something else is happening first.” I turned to Jericho. “Logistically speaking, this place is primed to blow. It’s going to be packed with people. Security bites, and what people the organizers have hired are largely untrained.”
A thought hit me. “That little drama last night with the burning of our tent might even have been a test run to see how much chaos they could cause and for how long.” Then I remembered Pengfei ripping out Li’s heart. “Or not. At any rate, I would feel a whole helluva lot better if you could have this joint swarming with off-duties tonight. Just make sure if something goes down they all know you’re in charge.”
He’d begun nodding about halfway through my speech. As soon as I finished, he was off his seat and on the phone Bergman had repaired, walking away from us, strolling down the winding path toward the Acrobats’ Arena.
Cassandra watched him go, slumping a little as the distance between them grew. “He was so nice.”
“Yeah.”
“And look at that butt.”
I considered said item. “Definitely superior. But not for Cassandra hands?”
She shook her head sadly. “Another woman stands between us now. He’ll meet her within the month.”
“Is she prettier than you?”
Cassandra started to smile.
“Well?”
“No.”
“Ha!”
“Jaz!”
“Honey, we’ve got to take our victories where we can find them.”
CHAPTERTWENTY-EIGHT
Jericho returned, but not for long. Duty called. So after making plans to meet up again later in the evening, we said our goodbyes.
“What now?” asked Cole.
The three of us stood in front of the RV under the awning. I was beginning to feel guilty about leaving Bergman so much on his own, but he liked it so much better that way. I’d have to make honing his people skills a priority on our next mission together even if he didn’t think it was necessary. I said, “That’s really up to you, Cassandra. What kinds of things will we need for this disguise spell?”
She held up a finger. “I was studying that last night. Let me get the book.”
She went inside. I waited for the growly, snarly sounds that would signal the snapping off of her head by our resident neurotic, but she emerged unscathed carrying a smelly old tome bound in something that sure looked like—
“Tell me that’s not people skin,” said Cole.
“Not,” she agreed. “I think it might be lamb.”
“Lamb isn’t much better,” I told her. “You know, where I grew up between 1988 and 1990, you couldn’t even buy lamb in the grocery store.”
Cassandra shook her head sadly. “That certainly explains a great deal about you,” she said.
Cole laughed softly until I kicked him in the foot. “So,” he said, “what does the book with the creepy cover say?”
She opened it up to a place she’d marked with—I kid you not—a square of toilet paper. It creaked. Cole and I traded glances. He did a haunted house shudder and I rolled my eyes.
“Would you two stop fooling around?”
“Sorry,” said Cole.
“You’re a disruptive influence,” I informed him.
“You’d be surprised how many of my teachers said the very same thing.”
“I doubt it.”
“We need to make a shopping list,” said Cassandra. She’d brought her purse out with her. After rooting around inside for half a minute, she emerged with a small pad of paper and a pen, which she handed to Cole.
He waved the pen around appreciatively. It was wrapped with soft red material, and a spray of fine red feathers had been hot glued to the top. “Cassandra,” he said, “I hope you know that poaching Muppets is illegal in this country.”
“Just be quiet and write.” Cassandra read off the list, which included some common herbs like catmint and basil and some items I’d never heard of before like derrentia and triptity. “Where are we supposed to find that stuff?” I asked.
“Corpus Christi’s a big city,” Cassandra replied. “There’s bound to be at least one coven running a supply store here, and most likely it will be near the bay.” She came to the end of the list and stopped, though I knew she wasn’t done.
“What?”
“We need an item of her clothing.”
“Of course. Can’t we save that till the end though? You know, until I’m physically on the yacht?”
She read over the spell. “Yes,” she said slowly. “But we need something of hers—”
“What, like a lock of hair?”
Cole threw up his hands. “How the hell are we supposed to get that? We can be pretty sure they don’t spend the day on that boat. They’d be too vulnerable.”
“Actually, I had another idea. Bergman may need to help though.”
I winced. “He’s slogging through a blizzard of work as it is.”
“Then let’s leave it for now. It may even be something we can accomplish without him. First, the shopping.”
“Can I go?” asked Cole. “Oh, stop looking at me like that. Bergman won’t let me watch him, much less help. Vayl’s down for the count, and all the beautiful babes are at work.” He wiggled his eyebrows. “Or at the mall.”
Four hours later, laden with bags and, okay, a cute green dress covered with silver stars that was on sale and in the same store as the triptity, so cut out the guilt, we returned to the RV.
Cassandra opened the door and stopped with her foot on the first step. I strained to see around her, especially when I heard Bergman humming to himself.“Bum, bump-bump, tah-dah, toodle-loo.” I tucked my head under Cassandra’s elbow.
Bergman was dancing.
Okay, it actually resembled an old man’s attempt not to break his hip while proving he could still shake a leg at his great-granddaughter’s wedding. But still.
“Bergman,” I said, “is that your happy dance?”
He grinned at me.
“Cassandra, look,” I said. “Bergman has teeth.”
“They’re very nice,” she replied.
“Lemme in before my arms fall off!” Cole demanded. We piled inside and dropped the bags under the monitor, which revealed a lot more activity than it had in a while. I spared it another glance. The Chinese crew had arrived. But Xia Wu hadn’t called. Well, I knew I might not be able to depend on him. If he didn’t contact me by the time Vayl woke, we’d modify our plan accordingly.
I turned back to Bergman. “What’d you do?” I asked. For an answer he held up a long thin wire. It took a tremendous effort not to snatch it, but I kept my hands to myself as I asked, “Is that the translator?”
He nodded, showing those perfect white teeth again. He came toward me and drape
d the wire over my head. “The idea,” he said, “is to weave this into your hair. If you have it kind of hanging down by your face like this,” he demonstrated, pulling a handful of curls forward and winding them around the wire, “it should never show. Okay. Say something.”
“How is it powered? I mean, it’s so thin. Where’s the battery?”
Nobody answered. They just stared. I watched slow amazement dawn on their faces.
“Oh my God,” said Cole. “You sound just like that bitch!”
“Watch your mouth, young man,” I snapped.
Cassandra nodded. “Exactly.”
Bergman moved closer. “Now say something.”
“This is so incredible, Bergman. You are a flipping genius!”
“That’s what I thought.” He wasn’t responding to my comment. “When I stand this near I can hear the English before it’s translated. So make sure you keep everybody at least three feet away from you. And figure out how to hide your lips. Use a fan maybe.”
“How’d you do it?” asked Cole.
“Well, I couldn’t have without already having Pengfei’s voice on the computer. Other than that . . . none of your business.” He sounded very offhand, but his shelter-bea-gle eyes begged,Feed me, pet me, love me . I wanted to be careful with what I said though. It would suck to jinx the whole deal with too much optimism. You saw that every day on Cinemax.
“This is stellar work, Miles. Probably your best ever, considering the deadline pressure. Why don’t you take the rest of the day off? Forget that idea we talked about earlier. I can nail Pengfei with a bolt, no problem.”
“Are you kidding? I’m on a roll, Jaz. I’ll have that sucker ready for you by dusk!” Scary light in his eyes now. Kinda fanatical, like Dale Spitzer and theOthers Suck crew. Scarier still that I could relate. The work did it, man. It seeped right into your marrow if you let it or, in our case, if you courted and sweet-talked and sometimes pleaded with it.
I hesitated. “Okay, but I’m warning you. We can’t play outside anymore. Cassandra’s got to do her half of the Pengfei disguise.And I need to figure out how to get back onboard the Constance Malloy.Come on, Wu, grow a set and give me a call!
A couple of hours later he did just that. Good thing too, because I’d just finished doing eenie meenie minie mo to decide which of my crew I should strangle first, and the future looked bleak for Bergman.
The biggest problem was that four grown adults weren’t meant to hang together in such a small space with so much at stake. Playing euchre, fine. Making preparations to assassinate two vampires who could easily turn their rig into kindling—nuh-uh.
Nobody found Cole’s antics amusing, which made him want to grab his toys and go play somewhere else. He disappeared into the bathroom for a while. Nobody even wanted to guess what he was up to in there. Then he ended up in the driver’s seat, flipping through radio stations so fast Cassandra finally yelled at him to either settle on one or put in a damn CD. Yes, she said “damn.” She was really starting to sweat.
I blamed part of it on the steam rising from the big pot bubbling over the stove. I don’t know why she felt she had to lean her entire face over it every time she stirred the contents, but there you go. I guess some spell casters are very hands-on that way.
Part of the problem was Bergman.
“These instruments are very sensitive to temperature,” he’d announce to the room at large. Then he’d subside. Five minutes later, “The metal is perspiring. How am I supposed to do intricate work like this with a metal that’s perspiring?”
Cassandra strode out of the kitchen and disappeared into the bathroom. Moments later she returned and slammed a stick of deodorant on Bergman’s table. “Try that on your damn metal!” she snapped as she went back to her work.
He raised his eyebrows at me like,What’s gotten into her? I pointed directly at him. Then I pressed my lips together, made a zipping motion across them, acted as if I was turning a lock at their center, and threw the imaginary key out the window.
I managed to keep them from open warfare, but Wu definitely heard the relief in my voice when I answered his call.
“I am sorry I have not phone before,” he said, sounding genuinely apologetic. “There was much work to be done before I can break free.”
“Don’t worry about it,” I said. “I’m impressed that you’re willing to give us a chance.”
“I am willing to talk,” he hedged.
Dammit, I don’t havetimefor negotiations! But one way or another I had to get hold of a Pengfei outfit. And a fan. And maybe some of her makeup and hair doodads. No sense in pushing this spell so hard it burst at the seams. Plus it would be nice to separate her from Lung to start with. Our plan would sail so much smoother if I could kill and become her before Lung even saw her this evening. If I could get into her room, maybe I could find a clue as to where to find her.My job would be so much easier if I just knew where you two stiffs holed up during the day.
“Miss Robinson?”
“Sorry, Xia Wu, my mind was wandering there for a second. Um, yes, talking would be great. Can I meet you onboard?”
“Certainly. As cover, please bring with you the dry-cleaning from J-Pards on Twenty-sixth and Elm. I neglected to retrieve it while in town as an excuse to have it brought to me.”
“Very clever,” I said.Dry-cleaning! Argh! Pengfei had left an outfit here on land, ripe for the picking, and I hadn’t even considered the possibility.
“My brother, Shao, have the ticket. He makes sure you get it within the hour. Please to be here before five.”
Okay, now I had two reasons not to like this guy, maybe three. One, he wasn’t going to jump right in line from the start. Two, he didn’t have a problem involving his brother. Though with a family to support, Shao could not afford to stand this close to the kind of danger Lung represented. And maybe three, isolated by the telephone, the timbre of Wu’s voice led me to suspect the People’s Liberation Army had been recruitingothers . And I didn’t think Wu’s particular brand cared much for mine. In fact, I thought he just might be a reaver.
CHAPTERTWENTY-NINE
My first instinct was to get the Xia clan the hell out of town. Stash them somewhere safe until Pengfei, Lung, and Wu were no longer threats. But then it might be obvious they had American allies and that could be even worse for them than what they faced now. Plus I could be wrong about Wu. So, though I would deeply regret it later, I decided the best course of action would be none at all.
However I had to get that dry-cleaning tag, and the Xias had been seen around our camp way too often. “Cole, you look bored.”
He rotated his chair to face me where I stood between Mary-Kate and Ashley, still holding the phone. At the moment he was making faces. By that, I mean he’d pinched his eyebrows between the thumbs and forefingers of each hand and was rearranging his expression in time to the song on the radio, which happened to be that timeless classic “Help Me, Rhonda” by the Beach Boys.
I pocketed my phone. “Are you what happens to little boys when they grow up without ever having gotten to play with Mr. Potato Head?”
He pulled his eyebrows into a frowny face. “I’ll have you know my lack of PlaySkool toys from ages seven to nine has scarred me for life. Did you know one Christmas I actually had to settle for a deluxe double upside-down loop racing set from Tyco?”
“I’m amazed you haven’t blown up an entire chain of toy stores by now. Come on, let’s get outta here.”
“You’re leaving?” Cassandra and Bergman chorused, their soprano (him) and tenor (her) combining to provide our listening ears with a lovely harmony of trepidation and outright alarm.
“Yes,” I said, “although I prefer to think of it as escaping. If you two kill each other before we get back, make sure you leave written—and by that I mean printed, not cursive—directions on how to use your gadgets.”
I didn’t actually run out the door, but it was definitely one of my quicker exits. Caught by surprise, Cole couldn’t kee
p up with me and was forced to dodge a barrage of demands and requests before finally rejoining me on the outside.
“I like those two,” Cole offered, “but only when they’re apart.”
“I agree.”
“Together they’re like spilled oil and Alaskan sea creatures.”
“Well, for our sakes I hope they find a way to mesh. Otherwise, I think, eventually, one of them will have to go.”
Cole put his fingers to the corners of his lips and pulled them down.
“Would you cut that out!”
He shrugged, as if at a loss as to understand my lack of humor. “So where arewe going?”
“To find the Xias.” At this time of day we should have been able to catch them at home, since Shao was between shows and, I kinda thought, they were expecting us.
We wandered the area, smiling at the people we saw, hoping we’d find the Xias before we had to stop somebody and ask for them by name. Then I had an inspiration. I grabbed Cole by the hand and dragged him back toward the path, where a row of game booths had just opened up for business.
“You played baseball as a kid, right?” I asked him.
“Of course.”
“And your dad coached the team?”
“Yeah,” he said with a curious, how-on-earth-did-you-know tone. Did I really look that stupid?
“So you were the pitcher.”
“I was the only kid who could get it across the plate without bouncing it first.” Slight defensive tone now.
I pushed him up to the counter of a place designed to look like a dugout. At the back, bowling pins had been set up on four different tables. The more you knocked down, the cooler the prize. I directed Cole’s attention to a little brown bear sitting on a shelf. Cost—ten pins. “That’s the one I want.”
The proprietor of the establishment, a fifty-something gentleman missing at least four teeth whose greasy brown hair framed his sad, skeletal face came forward to take my five bucks. I held on to my end, forcing him to meet my eyes.
“Tell you what,” I said. “I’m a cop, but I’m here to have a good time. So I don’t really want to check to make sure you’re running a straight game. What do you say you take a stroll to the back there and do that for me before we begin?” I let my eyes tell him exactly what I’d do to him if I discovered he was trying to cheat me, and he released that bill like I’d coated it with ricin. He kept his back to us as he fiddled with the middle game table. I saw his hands go to the mini apron tied around his bony hips; then he turned and looked at Cole.
Jennifer Rardin [Jaz Parks series book 2] Another One Bites The Dust Page 19
